The Ontario government has hired AECOM as a consultant to begin the preliminary design and environmental assessment study to eventually widen Highway 6 south of Hamilton.

The project, said provincial officials, will increase the number of lanes from two to four over a nine-kilometre stretch from Upper James to Highway 403, an idea that had been green-lighted in the 1980s.

Flamborough-Glanbrook Progressive Conservative MPP Donna Skelly said expanding the highway is “vital” for the expansion of the Hamilton International Airport.

“This is an important step forward in our work to ensure the safe, efficient movement of people and goods here in Hamilton and across the region,” she said.

Hamilton International Airport has seen the number of its cargo flights jump during the pandemic and it has only accelerated with the expansion of DHL’s $100 million Gateway building last year.

Cargo traffic, with such shipping companies as Cargojet, UPS, Amazon, Canada Post, Purolator, and DHL responding to the increase in e-commerce and the movement of medical supplies. There has been a 10 per cent increase in landings at the airport in 2020 compared to 2019, with a 6.5 per cent increase in cargo-related revenue as of June 30, 2020.

AECOM is a global company, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with an office in Toronto. It is also the consultant on the Highway 6 and 401 expansion in the Township of Puslinch.

Provincial officials said the environmental assessment will include consulting with Indigenous communities, municipalities, airport and business owners. The assessment is expected to start in the spring of 2022 and is projected to be completed two years later in the spring of 2024.

A four-lane highway link to Hamilton Airport was originally designed and received environment assessment approval in the late 1980s. The existing two-lane road was constructed in 2003.

The province announced the project to much fanfare in March 2021 to improve traffic flow and safety, said officials.

The project was included in the province’s 2021 budget that allocated $2.6 billion expanding Highway 40, Highway 400, the expansion of Highway 6 and Highway 401 between Hamilton and Guelph, engineering and environmental assessment work on the Bradford Bypass and work on the Cochrane Bypass.

A price tag for the project has been kept confidential, say officials so that the province can receive “the best competitive bids.”

It is instructive that the financiers behind the proposed destruction of the Garner Road marsh in the headwaters of Ancaster Creek are also big pushers of the fossil fuels responsible for frying the planet.

The marsh replacement scheme was turned down by the Hamilton Conservation Authority last June in a divided, but secret vote. But their permit denial is being appealed to the Ontario Land Tribunal (Premier Doug Ford’s replacement for the Ontario Municipal Board). If successful, the appeal threatens far more than one marsh. It could gut the ability of conservation authorities to protect wetlands, waterways and forests all across Ontario.

Conservation authorities are the second largest landholder in Ontario (exceeded only by the provincial government). They are our main source of accessible recreational natural areas and our main defence against catastrophic flooding which is definitely getting worse because of climate change. Most were established after hurricane Hazel clobbered southern Ontario in 1954 killing more than 80 people.

It is unconscionable that these highly successful institutions are now being threatened by an Alberta government company. When massive flooding hit Calgary and area in 2014, it was widely acknowledged that much of the damage could have been avoided if that province had conservation authorities like Ontario.

The Alberta government Crown corporation that has purchased the Garner Road property is called AIMCo. It wants to construct five large warehouses along with a couple of hundred bays for transport trucks and parking for over 1,000 cars covering most of the 34 hectares (85 acres).

AIMCo is also the majority owner of the Coastal Gas Link pipeline being bulldozed across the unceded Indigenous lands of the Wet’suwet’en without permission of the hereditary chiefs, but instead with frequent assistance from heavily-armed RCMP. If completed, that pipeline will transport fracked gas from northeastern B.C. for export to China and other possible markets.

The burning of that gas will mean millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases added to the global atmosphere. That’s in addition to the poisoning of groundwater by the extractive fracking process and the leakage of methane (called “natural” gas in North America) — a more potent source of global warming than carbon dioxide.

The pipeline construction is destroying tens of thousands of the trees that help protect against flooding and erosion, absorb carbon, and cool the surrounding lands. Similarly, the destruction of the Garner Road Marsh area is also bad news for our climate and likely for whomever and whatever lies downstream along Ancaster Creek.

Along with reducing flooding, wetlands are about our most productive ecosystems. They pull carbon out of the atmosphere more effectively than trees while also cleaning water and providing critical habitat for turtles, frogs, salamanders, birds and other living species.

Those who want to build over the marsh and the highly productive agricultural land around it promise to “construct” a replacement wetland in a location more convenient to their plans. They also promise a large stormwater pond to catch the run-off from these newly impervious surfaces.

This is the long-standing face of for-profit “development.” Replace natural systems with artificial ones and allegedly control the resulting run-off — at least when designed although climate change increasingly makes them inadequate to this task. And too bad about wildlife habitat and food production which are nice to have but just not nearly as profitable in our sacred market economy.

One might suggest new warehouses would be better located on already contaminated industrial land near the harbour where rail, highway and water transport are immediately available. But AIMCo has chosen to buy in rural Ancaster, and warehouses are exactly what city planners expected when they expanded the urban boundary to create the Airport Employment Growth District. Keeping those lands for food security and flood protection just wasn’t seen as “economic” and climate change was not part of the calculations.

-Don McLean is part of SaveOurStreamsHamilton.org and the Hamilton 350 Committee for action on climate change. He was recently granted an honorary doctorate by McMaster.

Ancaster Coun. Lloyd Ferguson says he’s decided not to pursue reprisals against three Hamilton Conservation Authority directors who he believes may have violated their code of conduct in opposing his acclamation as board chair for another year.

“I’m trying to get some peace out there, so I’m going to let it go,” he said of his concerns about a letter written by Stoney Creek Coun. Brad Clark, Ward 5 Coun. Russ Powers and Puslinch representative Susan Fielding, who boycotted the Feb. 3 authority meeting.

Ferguson had told Hamilton Community News on Feb. 4 that authority staff had been asked to get a legal opinion on whether the letter broke directors’ rules.

He took issue with the authors’ statement, “We do not wish to be complicit in the acclamation of a chair with whom our conservation allies, foundation donors and several past HCA and foundation chairs have lost confidence.”

“‘Complicit’ to me means that we’re doing something illegal and my board is not happy about that,” he said at the time, citing his Google search of the word. “What’s illegal about doing their job?”

Ferguson had also called it “completely irresponsible” to boycott the meeting, suggesting Clark and Powers had political motives and that Puslinch councillors should be concerned Fielding neglected her duty to represent them.

“Both of them were campaigning to become the chair,” he said of Clark and Powers. “They weren’t getting a great response from them, so I guess they just took their bat and went home.”

A week later, Ferguson said the authority had formally reviewed whether the letter’s wording broke the code, but he is dropping the matter.

“I want to get this behind us and get on with the business of the day,” he said.

All three letter writers rejected that “complicit” implies illegality or that they did anything wrong by boycotting the meeting.

“There is no violation of the code of conduct and it’s not irresponsible to absent yourself from a vote. Parliamentarians have been doing it for hundreds of years,” Clark said, disagreeing with Ferguson’s take on the use of “complicit.”

“You kind of have to take the word complicit in the context of how it was used, and it was used in the sentence, ‘complicit in the acclamation.’ ”

Clark said he did ask some board members whether they might back him for chair.

“They had already made the decision that they were supporting Lloyd, so there was no opportunity for really opposing him,” he said.

Powers said via email he “certainly wasn’t campaigning for the job” and the use of complicit “is most appropriate in indicating involvement in a wrong action or decision.”

“These allegations appear to be deflections and do not negate the fact that hundreds of conservation allies including major donors and former HCA chairs and foundation supporters have indicated their lack of confidence in his leadership,” he said.

“Choosing to vilify the messengers will only further isolate the current chair from our many HCA allies. We urge him to work towards healing these wounds rather than creating new ones.”

Fielding said via email she enjoys “strong support” from Puslinch councillors and has kept them apprised of the issues prompting her boycott.

These include Ferguson’s push for an offsetting policy to allow some natural features like wetlands to be destroyed if replaced elsewhere and his “derisive comments regarding Puslinch's financial contribution to the HCA,” she said.

The township covers $30,000 of the authority’s $14.1-million budget, while the city contributes $4.65 million.

Fielding also cited Ferguson’s “indignation” over provincial legislation that would have given Puslinch a rotating seat as chair or vice-chair. The authority successfully applied for an exemption.

“Puslinch council is also aware of the public outcry for Ferguson to step down,” she said.

You might assume Lloyd Ferguson’s reappointment as chair was universally popular because he was acclaimed, but that would be wrong.

You expect to find political intrigue and hardball at city hall, or the provincial legislature. But the local conservation authority?

Don’t let the bucolic name and image fool you, Hamilton Conservation Authority has its own political culture, and its share of intrigue. We got a look at that last week with the acclamation of Ancaster Coun. Lloyd Ferguson as chair of the board.

You might assume Ferguson’s reappointment was universally popular, or at least not opposed, because he was acclaimed, but that would be wrong.

Three members of the board — Stoney Creek Coun. Brad Clark, Ward 5 Coun. Russ Powers and citizen appointee Susan Fielding — boycotted the chair vote, using some strong language.

“We do not wish to be complicit in the acclamation of a chair with whom our conservation allies, foundation donors and several past HCA board and foundation chairs have lost confidence.”

They were referring to more than 200 emails sent to board members from members of the environmental alliance, Save Our Streams. Their concern about Ferguson as HCA chair is that he’s not conservation minded, at least not enough. SOS said in a news release that it is “disappointed” with Ferguson’s acclamation, and city council is to blame for not appointing “HCA board members who are committed conservationists and instead have appointed a majority who don’t meet that basic criteria.”

Ferguson, of course, rejects the claims he is pro-development over conservation minded. At the virtual HCA meeting, he said: “Let me make it very clear: I have not and will not compromise conservation (areas) ... I take this job very seriously.”

Maybe, but that is not a perception shared by some of his board colleagues, and a considerable number of environmentalists.

Ferguson acknowledges having supported development proposals that would increase the city’s tax base, and says “I do not apologize saying we need tax relief and jobs in Hamilton.” About that, Ferguson is not wrong. Residential taxpayers shoulder around 85 per cent of Hamilton’s tax bill, with business and industry footing the rest of the tab. That remains disproportionately tilted at the expense of residential taxpayers. A councillor wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t advocate for new business and industrial investment.

The question is, does that sort of advocacy fit with the mission and vision of a conservation authority? On the HCA website, it says the authority’s vision is “A healthy watershed for everyone” and its mission is “To lead in the conservation of our watershed and connect people to nature.”

It also says “key areas of conservation authority activity include” work on environmental protection, water resource management and lifelong learning. But nowhere does it say that part of the HCA’s job is to strike a balance between conservation and economic development. In fact, if you search the authority’s strategic plan for 2019 to 2023, you will be hard pressed to find a section that deals with developing on conservation authority land. Nor will you find reference to “offsetting” the contentious policy where developers get to develop on sensitive wetlands provided new wetlands are developed to offset the loss.

But offsetting was on the table at the HCA as recently as last year, and Ferguson was in the chair and supporting it. It was eventually defeated, and Ferguson went along with voting against it, but he also said at the time that he voted against offsetting because he could see the idea wasn’t going to fly with the majority of the board. And he made no secret that he was disappointed with the outcome, including with a staff report that also went against the offsetting proposal.

Ferguson also said not having an offsetting policy would hamper development around Hamilton airport, and he cited a decision in 2020 in which the HCA board voted against a proposal to bulldoze a wetland by the headwaters of Ancaster Creek to make way for a massive warehouse complex.

So, is Ferguson the right person to chair the HCA board? Especially when the provincial government is heavily tilted toward development over conservation? We will leave you to decide, but at the very least the authority has some serious bridge building to do, and that could be tough with the current chair.

A lot has been written about development in urban Ancaster recently but I wonder if we are failing to notice a different threat that’s happening right under our noses. Many will recall that the urban boundary was last expanded onto farmland in 2015 with the creation of the ‘Aerotropolis’. Now renamed the Airport Employment Growth District (AEGD) it comprises 1300 acres of Prime 1 and 2 agricultural farmland, forests and wildlife habitat bounded roughly by Fiddlers Green, Garner and Twenty Rds , Upper James and Mount Hope airport to the south. As “Employment land” this productive foodland is now earmarked for warehouse development.

Something to consider when thinking of warehouses blanketing these fields is that Mount Hope is the highest point of land between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and as such these rolling hills cradle the headwaters, the very source, of the Ancaster Creek, the Welland River, Twenty Mile Creek, and other streams.

The Ancaster Creek is a jewel in this town, springing from its source in the Garner Marsh nestled in farmland behind 140 Garner Rd E, flowing across farm fields, along the fairway of the Hamilton Golf and Country Club, through urban Ancaster and over Sherman Falls, through Dundas on its journey to Cootes Paradise. How fortunate we are to have a living cold water stream literally running through our collective backyards!

Maybe you can sense a “but” coming? Here it is: The Ancaster Creek is at risk due to a development proposal now coming down the pipe thanks to the 2015 decision to create the AEGD, where the headwaters are found. The new owner of 140 Garner Rd E is AIMCo - Alberta Investment Management Corporation. They manage Alberta public pensions for the province of Alberta and from their tower in Edmonton, they’ve decided that the Garner Marsh and the Ancaster Creek are expendable. Their proposal is for a 1.3 million Sq foot five warehouse complex on that 89 acres, which would obliterate the Garner Marsh. That amount of paving and buildings would also mean far more contaminated stormwater runoff heading down Ancaster Creek.

Last June, developers ONE Properties on behalf of AIMCo applied to the Hamilton Conservation Authority for a permit to “slide over the Marsh” - in simple terms, destroy the marsh, dig a new watery hole in a location convenient to the developer, then call it a ‘wetland’. Residents mobilised against this and thanks to over 200 letters and seven delegations to the HCA, the Board rejected the proposal in a secret vote. This was despite vocal support for the proposal to destroy the Marsh from the HCA Chair and Ward 12 councillor Lloyd Ferguson. He is on the public record praising the development and disparaging the Mash, a biodiversity hotspot characterised by HCA staff as “locally significant”. AIMCO has now appealed the HCA’s permit denial and our organisation, Save our Streams Hamilton, will now be fighting this appeal alongside the HCA and Environmental Defence at the Ontario Land Tribunal.

In November HCA staff recommended that a watershed-wide offsetting policy that Mr. Ferguson had pushed for, NOT be adopted by the HCA, based on scientific considerations and 300 letters against the policy from residents and local groups. Again, as a vocal supporter of offsetting, Mr. Ferguson praised the potential for “jobs and tax revenue”. He also expressed his “disappointment” with the staff recommendation, and ultimately as the only member in favour, said he would “reluctantly” vote with the other Board members.

We are left wondering how Cllr Ferguson, who helped create the AEGD and is determined to cover it in tax producing warehouses, can possibly be squared with HCA Chair Ferguson who has also vowed “not to compromise conservation”? Mr. Ferguson must make a decision: Ancaster wetlands or Ancaster warehouses. It can’t go both ways.

-Nancy Hurst is a resident of Ancaster and a member of Save Our Streams Hamilton. Learn more at their website: www.SaveOurStreamsHamilton.org

A campaign to oust Ancaster Coun. Lloyd Ferguson as chair of the Hamilton Conservation Authority fell flat when he was re-elected by acclamation — but not before exposing a rift on the board of directors.

Puslinch representative Susan Fielding joined city councillors Brad Clark and Russ Powers in boycotting the authority’s Feb. 3 annual meeting, citing their poll of other directors who indicated a desire to acclaim Ferguson to a fourth one-year term.

In a letter read aloud by secretary-treasurer Neil McDougall at the start of the meeting, the three said they decided “not to participate in this evening’s action.”

“To date, we and you have received over 200 emails from conservation and environmental allies, donors, including major donors, who have expressed their lack of confidence in the current chair and his continuance in that capacity,” the letter stated.

“We do not wish to be complicit in the acclamation of a chair with whom our conservation allies, foundation donors and several past HCA and foundation chairs have lost confidence.”

Shortly thereafter, Dundas citizen representative Dan Bowman nominated Ferguson, who was acclaimed by the other seven directors on hand without discussion.

Vice-chair Santina Moccio was also acclaimed to another term, as was Bowman in his role as chair of the conservation advisory board.

Before proceeding with the rest of the meeting, Ferguson addressed his opponents, including those who submitted 197 items of correspondence to the meeting and wrote letters or opinion pieces published in the Hamilton Spectator.

“A number of them stated that we are bulldozing over or paving wetlands, and unfortunately I never saw one example because I’m not aware of one. I don’t know how that message got out there, but it’s too bad it did,” he said.

Ferguson said much of the criticism focused on his effort to get the authority to enact a natural heritage offsetting policy to allow developers to destroy environmentally sensitive habitat if they recreate it elsewhere.

But he said he ultimately joined other directors in only agreeing to revise existing policies to try to minimize habitat loss if destruction is ordered by a higher level of government, not mentioning that he said at the time he only did so reluctantly.

His version of events left out that he criticized the authority’s rejection of a proposal to bulldoze a wetland by the headwaters to Ancaster Creek to make way for a massive warehouse complex on Garner Road.

But Ferguson did note the developer is appealing the decision to the Ontario Land Tribunal.

“The letters also suggested I support jobs and tax revenue over conservation, and I’ll just open up by saying I do not apologize for saying we need tax relief and jobs for Hamilton,” he said, arguing the city needs to increase its industrial tax base.

“But let me make it very clear: I have not and will not compromise conservation as chair of the HCA.”

Ferguson then trumpeted several authority accomplishments and initiatives, including the purchase of 72 hectares of natural land in 2021 and the construction now underway on a wetland at the new Saltfleet Conservation Area in upper Stoney Creek.

While directors moved on to other agenda items, they added the letter from Clark, Powers and Fielding to the new business portion at the end of the meeting before going into private session on two confidential matters.

Citizen board members Moccio, Bowman and Jim Cimba all said they weren’t polled on their views on re-electing Ferguson as indicated by the letter, but none addressed the concerns it raised.

“I was not contacted, I was not polled, so this statement is not correct as it applies to me,” Moccio said. “I’m disappointed. That’s my comment.”

Ferguson thanked the directors for their “great support and that great vote of confidence.”

“I’m sitting here so please that I was unanimously re-elected, or acclaimed,” he said.

If you’ve ever had the chance to view it, you would agree that the sunset over Cootes Paradise can be a breathtaking experience. Sometimes, familiarity can cause us to forget how spectacular our surroundings are; we take this natural beauty for granted, as something that anyone can just walk out the door and enjoy. In Hamilton, we can; we are surrounded by natural beauty, from the shores of Lake Ontario to the towering escarpment replete with cascading waterfalls.

Cootes Paradise is our wetland nature conservatory, our protected environment. Its significance as a stopover on the Central and Mississippi Flyways brings hundreds of thousands of migratory birds into our area. It is a biodiversity hot spot, a giant fish hatchery, producing between five and 20 million fish for Lake Ontario. The determining factor is the level of pollution. More pollution means less fish. Obviously.

It’s not just Cootes Paradise. It’s all the little pockets of natural wetlands that make up the watershed that feeds Cootes that are part of this paradise. We don’t see these as such, viewing them only as wasteland to be developed and paved over, for jobs, houses and commercial development, the water contained and restrained to pipes and artificial waterways.

John Terpstra, in his book “Daylighting Chedoke,” takes the reader on a meditative journey to expose the course of Chedoke Creek, infamous now for its role in Sewergate. The headwaters of Chedoke Creek, which at one time bubbled up through the ground at Spring Farm, now sits under paved roadway somewhere between West 5th and Upper James. Lost forever, its course is now constrained to follow the underground built environment, its waters lost to the wildlife that once depended on them, to the people that enjoyed its passage. This is what’s on tap for the future for the Garner Road marsh and the creeks that flow from it if the developers get their way at the Land Tribunal Board.

We are at the point in our history where we know better than to disrupt nature so spectacularly. I want to emphasize this: We know better. But it’s also a transitionary time, between the Old Gods and the New, where beliefs that support an exploitative relationship with the environment are coming under attack, in favour, one hopes, of conservation and remediation. No longer is it acceptable to bulldoze the natural landscape for the sake of development and jobs. Not in the era of climate change, declining biodiversity and growing food insecurity, and not from truckers who refuse to follow rules, but from a changing climate that will affect food production everywhere.

That we live so close to such an important wetland is lost on many of us. The perils of proximity. Our respect for the marsh, for the creeks and streams that feed it, has been subsumed by the belief that humans can control nature, that the only good jobs are development jobs and that, ultimately, the only consideration of land value is commercial; it has no right to exist in and of itself to support the nature that lives on it. It must be used for humans.

Human carelessness was responsible for the environmental degradation resulting from Sewergate, a carelessness that found root and nurture in a culture that has fallen away from its respect for nature and turned instead to a dependence on technology to dominate the natural environment. We have lost some of our humanness in this turn.

To survive we must reconnect with our natural environment, naturally. The ice is frozen at Cootes, and skaters have been out enjoying winter in the most quintessentially Canadian way, with ice skates on a frozen pond. On World Wetlands Day, don’t forget to take a minute to give thanks for the marsh and for all the little creeks and streams that feed it. And commit yourself to fight for the health of this wetland so the birds and fish, and humans, might survive.

If there’s one silver lining to the cloud of COVID-19 it’s that, through online live streaming, the public has been able to easily access meetings that were previously difficult to observe. One such organization is the Hamilton Conservation Authority whose board of director meetings are live streamed on the first Thursday of each month via their YouTube channel. These online meetings have proven to be very revealing. We have been watching and noted a pattern evolving: time and again the chair’s wishes and motions very clearly ran contrary to the staff recommendations, the other board members thoughts and even the very mandate of the HCA. We began to notice his clear preference for development over conservation.

However, Friday’s opinion piece by HCA board chair Lloyd Ferguson seemed to suggest that any criticism levied at him as chair amounted to criticism of the staff and HCA board as a whole. Not so! The HCA staff and board members who hold conservation as their priority are to be commended and applauded. Save our Streams Hamilton ran a campaign this past week to help citizens who care about conservation to easily write an email to the HCA board and voice their concerns solely about its chair, Ferguson, in advance of the upcoming HCA leadership vote on Thursday. To date, more than 170 engaged and informed Hamiltonians have sent in personal and heartfelt letters which are available for anyone to read as part of February’s HCA agenda package.

We witnessed in early summer Ferguson voicing his enthusiastic support for Toronto developers ONE Properties’ acting on behalf of new landowner AIMCo’s (Alberta Investment Management Corp who manages public pensions in that province) application to demolish the Garner Marsh. Situated in the headwaters of the Ancaster Creek Watershed on Garner Road, AIMCO’s plan is to demolish the Garner Marsh to make way for a 1.3-million-square-foot warehouse complex. Ferguson claimed that paving the marsh and digging a new watery hole in a location convenient to the developer “would actually enhance” the wetland.

Later in the fall, conservation watchers were treated to the sorry spectacle of Ferguson expressing his “disappointment” in HCA staff expert Scott Peck’s recommendation against adopting a watershed-wide offsetting policy. A policy that would have rolled out the red carpet for development applications on our headwaters, allowing wetlands to be paved and “replacements” to be built elsewhere. Ferguson hoped “to get staff on side but they decided not to.” Peck’s recommendation was based in science and the feedback received from over 300 Hamiltonians after months of public consultation but Ferguson expressed frustration that the public needed to be educated that jobs and taxes would be lost if offsetting were not permitted in our watersheds. His claim that “the board also unanimously accepted the staff report to maintain the existing policy framework for natural heritage features” rings hollow after viewing the recorded video where, as the lone member in favour of offsetting, he acquiesced, accepting staff’s recommendation but stating: “Reluctantly, I’ll support it tonight.”

Save our Streams Hamilton joins the citizens of Hamilton in urging the board of the HCA to elect on Thursday a leader who will unflinchingly side with the preservation of existing Hamilton Mountain wetlands and the restoration of lost ones as we sadly recognize that only 0.4 per cent of historic wetlands still exist in the Ancaster Creek subwatershed alone. Who among the board will step up to the task?

On Feb. 3, Councillor Lloyd Ferguson could be re-elected as Chair of the Hamilton Conservation (HCA) Board for a fourth term. His re-election would continue to threaten conversation in Hamilton and that is something we should all want to avoid.

The first red flag is the fact that Doug Ford’s government has waived the term limit that should prevent Ferguson from even being considered. Ford’s government has made it clear that they are not friends of our natural environment and that they have no idea how critical it is for sustaining human civilization, let alone the myriad of other species that are essential to our survival. There are many examples, with the most recent being their plans to build two new highways through the Greenbelt. Ferguson’s approach to his role as chair of the HCA is consistent with that of the provincial government. The following are examples why he should not be Chair of the HCA.

In June 2021, the HCA needed to make a decision on a permit application from a developer who had intentions to build a 1.3-million-square-foot warehouse complex on a wetland at 140 Garner Rd East in Ancaster which is also the headwaters of Ancaster Creek. In their own words, the HCA ‘is dedicated to the conservation and enjoyment of watershed lands and water resources.’ HCA staff recommended denying the permit since destroying a wetland is anathema to everything they stand for. Chair Ferguson openly advocated for approval. He cited the jobs and tax revenue from the development. He also cited his frustration that the wetlands don’t run nice and neatly down property lines and that the HCA’s policies were getting in the way.

This issue of enabling more development on HCA watershed areas was further tested in November 2021 as the HCA examined an offsetting policy. In a nutshell, such a policy would allow development on wetlands or other natural areas that are currently under the protection of the HCA. The developer would be accountable to provide compensation for the destruction of the natural area by re-creating it (a term that leaves much open to interpretation and manipulation) elsewhere. Ferguson openly advocated for this policy to be implemented because of the benefit it would have for development, jobs, and tax revenue. Eventually, he saw that he was vastly outnumbered and ultimately voted against the policy, but suggested that his opponents didn’t understand the benefits of offsetting and lamented that “it’s going to take a lot of educating and convincing to turn the public around.”

Finally, in his role as city councillor he voted for urban expansion that would have destroyed 3,300 acres of prime farmland to enable suburban sprawl. Fortunately, in November 2021, he was heavily outvoted by the rest of Council. Of course, this issue was not an HCA matter, but it serves to illustrate his mindset and disregard for anything that gets in the way of development. This is not surprising for an individual who built a career in the construction industry. Builders are essential to accommodate future population growth within our existing urban boundaries, but Ferguson should be kept as far away as possible from making decisions on behalf of the Hamilton Conservation Authority.

The bottom line is that humans are part of nature and not its master. All of us may not yet adequately understand this fact, and to paraphrase Ferguson’s words "further education is required". But most certainly the Chair of our Conservation Authority’s Board should grasp this concept and act accordingly. Ferguson has demonstrated time and again that he does not. It is in all of our best interests that he is not re-elected as Chair of the HCA. Join our campaign for new HCA leadership at SaveOurStreamsHamilton.org

-Craig Cassar lives in Ancaster

The Hamilton Conservation Authority is holding its annual meeting Feb. 3 and will be selecting a new chair from its current roster of board members. The councillor for Ancaster, Lloyd Ferguson, is currently the chair and he could be again, despite there being ample evidence that conservation is the last thing in which the councillor is interested. It’s like putting the fox in the hen house given his position on several high profile conservation issues.

Under the changes brought in by the Ford government in its overhaul of Ontario conservation authorities, the tenure of the chair position was capped at two years. The HCA under Ferguson campaigned for an exception and for whatever reason got one, meaning Ferguson is eligible to run again. Much ado was made by conservationists over the number of people appointed to the conservation authorities that are connected to the development industry, and it’s clear that Ferguson is well connected to the development sector from a quick look at his campaign donor list and from his past employment at a senior level with a large construction firm.

Let’s review Coun. Ferguson’s “conservation” record. We don’t have to go far back, we’ll begin with Sewergate and his willingness to hide the massive contamination of Cootes Paradise from the people of Hamilton. Not only did he agree to hide it, he maintains it was the right decision, given the advice came from a lawyer. He has not apologized for his part in council’s duplicity and seems bemused that anyone would expect him to offer one. Someone with conservation and a love of nature at heart would be appalled by both the leak and the advice of the lawyer; they would want to undergo some kind of atonement.

The Spencer Creek overflow pipe was a project that Ferguson pushed and pushed at council, even against city staff advice. It’s like the Chedoke leak never happened and he learned absolutely nothing about how the people of Hamilton regard the treatment of their water. Everyone I encountered who would speak about it was incredulous at his position. People sympathized with the homeowners, but felt the pipe represented a failure of the system to protect the natural environment and after four years of leaked raw sewage no one really wants to see that mess again.

Offsetting is the mistaken idea that you can accommodate development in protected areas by undertaking remediation in another locale. Currently the HCA has no offsetting policy, rightly believing that its mandate is conservation not accommodation. Under Ferguson’s tenure, the HCA has drafted an offsetting policy that will accommodate development and jobs over conservation and the watershed. For an entity established to oversee the conservation of nature, offsetting should be anathema.

The need for an offsetting policy was highlighted by the HCA decision to say no to a proposal by developers to move the Garner Road marsh, located at the headwater of Ancaster Creek, in order to build 1.3 million square feet of warehousing. In voting against the proposal, Coun. Brad Clark, a member of the HCA board, raised concerns regarding developer interests being prioritized while Ferguson argued the importance of jobs. Something is definitely wrong with this picture.

People who are concerned over the leadership of Ferguson as chair of the HCA have mobilized their energies toward protecting the watershed under the name of Save Our Streams — SOS (SaveOurStreamsHamilton.org). They have just gone public with a website full of information about the Garner Road marsh and its significance to the watershed. They are campaigning to save the wetland and to replace Ferguson as HCA chair.

This isn’t pro- or anti-development, it’s about conserving what little nature we have left around us. It’s about protecting the natural environment and the water that sustains us all. Check out their website and sign up for information. And, please, take a minute to contact the HCA and demand better leadership.

At least one of two Hamilton councillors won’t be leading a local conservation authority board after the annual CA election cycle in February. New provincially-imposed term limits are forcing Brenda Johnson to step down as head of the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority.

The Ford government has exempted Hamilton CA from those rules so its chair, Lloyd Ferguson, could obtain a fourth consecutive term. However Ferguson has come out on the losing end of some key HCA decisions in the last year, making his position increasingly tenuous.

That reached a peak at the board’s November meeting with the rejection of a policy that would have allowed developers to destroy wetlands and other natural features in return for compensation. Ferguson had pushed for the offsetting policy and his comments contrasted sharply with the rest of the HCA board who all endorsed the staff recommendation.

Ferguson spoke last and made clear his disagreement with both staff and other board members. He said he was “disappointed” in the staff report because it didn’t allow for maximum development, and went on to warn that current wetland protection policies will hurt Hamilton’s economy.

“What I like about the offsetting policies is I like the jobs [and] number two I like the tax revenue,” the chair declared. “I was hoping to get staff onside for this and they decided not to, so it’s going to be difficult”.

Ferguson repeatedly referenced the warehousing proposal that would have destroyed a wetland in the headwaters of Ancaster Creek which he supported. “Wetlands as we saw at 140 Garner Road don’t run nice and neatly down property lines. They go across as in the case of 140 Garner on an angle and make a lot of the property undevelopable, so ... by following the wetland contours it will make a lot of that land undevelopable.”

Ferguson won a vote in November 2020 that directed HCA staff to draft an offsetting policy requested by owners of 140 Garner. Initially that was opposed by just two votes on the eleven member HCA board, but it’s been downhill ever since for the chair.

When staff presented a draft policy at the board’s April meeting there was a bitter clash over whether Ferguson was upholding conservation principles or thought the HCA should make jobs and development its priorities. In the same meeting it was announced that the 140 Garner owners were applying for a permit without waiting for the finalization of the offsetting policy.

That generated a storm of public opposition that by the June decision meeting included eight delegations and over 200 letters to the HCA. After an hour and a half in secret session, the board rejected the developers’ proposal to replace the existing wetland with an artificial pond.

The 6000-word draft offsetting policy subsequently drew detailed comments from 300 people, virtually all opposed to allowing wetlands and other natural features to be destroyed for compensation. And that led to the November meeting where Ferguson was left as the sole defender of an offsetting policy.

Ferguson suggested that opponents didn’t understand the benefits of offsetting and lamented that “it’s going to take a lot of educating and convincing to turn the public around.” Out of step with both his board and the public puts Ferguson’s continued role as chair of the HCA in question.

Ontario Land Tribunal appeal argues relocation plan benefits ecology.

A Toronto developer isn’t giving up on a bid to bulldoze a wetland by the headwaters to Ancaster Creek to make way for a massive warehouse complex despite opposition from the Hamilton Conservation Authority and the public.

One Properties Limited Partnership is appealing a decision in June by the authority’s board of directors to deny the necessary permit to the Ontario Land Tribunal, which adjudicates planning disputes.

A letter to the tribunal from One Properties lawyer Patrick Harrington states his client disagrees that its plan to create a new wetland elsewhere on the 140 Garner Rd. East property doesn’t comply with authority policies.

Relocating the wetland will provide “a net ecological benefit” and the plan has “demonstrated that there will be no negative impacts on natural features or their ecological functions,” his June 18 letter states.

“The (existing) wetland is not provincially significant, has no open water, is isolated from other natural features, has low vegetative species diversity and generally does not function as part of the larger natural heritage network,” Harrington states.

“The proposed relocation would also allow for an enlarged, open-water area with the potential for increases in plant and animal diversity and overall functionality.”

Scott Peck, the authority’s deputy chief administrative officer, said staff only learned of the appeal via a Nov. 24 letter from the land tribunal, which advised the parties to “be prepared to proceed at any time” but set no hearing date

He said he couldn’t comment on the appeal’s substance.

“All I can say is we’re preparing our position on this and we’ll go through that OLT process,” said Peck, whose recommendation to deny the permit was approved by directors without elaboration after an hour-and-a-half private session.

Ancaster resident Nancy Hurst, who helped lead opposition to the permit, called the appeal disappointing.

She said the permit’s denial had widespread public support, including from seven delegated speakers at the June 3 meeting, a coalition of local environmental groups and in 133 written submissions from citizens.

“I feel that it’s going against what the community very, very clearly stated, which is that we value our wetlands and our natural heritage,” Hurst said.

Don McLean, who also urged directors to deny the permit at the June 3 meeting, said the appeal follows an unusual process that saw authority directors ask staff to create a heritage offsetting policy in response to One Properties application a year ago.

The resulting policy, unanimously approved by directors in November, only allows the destruction of protected wetlands and other natural features if ordered by a higher level of government.

A public consultation in the summer drew 295 responses, virtually all opposed to an offsetting policy.

McLean said the appeal predates the new policy, suggesting One Properties knew the outcome wouldn’t be friendly to its plan.

“The process that has unfolded here has repeatedly made clear that the public and the conservation authority board are opposed to destroying a wetland and providing something else in place of it,” he said.

‘Disappointed’ Ferguson says public needs more education on benefits.

To the chagrin of its chair, the Hamilton Conservation Authority won’t allow protected wetlands and other natural features to be bulldozed unless forced to do so by higher levels of government.

Authority directors on Nov. 4 unanimously backed a staff recommendation against creating a “last resort” natural heritage offsetting policy to let developers destroy environmentally sensitive habitat if they recreate it elsewhere.

Existing policies will instead be revised to ensure there is no net loss of natural features if the authority is forced to allow their destruction by a provincial ministerial zoning order, or provincially or municipally led environmental assessment.

A public consultation in the summer drew 295 responses, virtually all opposed to an offsetting policy.

But Ancaster Coun. Lloyd Ferguson, who as chair pushed for the policy, said he was “disappointed” by the staff recommendation and only reluctantly supported it because comments from other authority directors made the outcome clear.

He said not having a policy will hamper development in the airport employment growth district, citing the authority’s rejection last June of a proposal to bulldoze a wetland by the headwaters to Ancaster Creek to make way for a massive warehouse complex.

Ferguson continued to defend the 140 Garner Rd. East plan, which he said reflects that wetlands “don’t run nice and neatly down property lines” and will limit development in the airport district, jeopardizing jobs and tax revenue.

He said many people are opposed to an offsetting policy because the upsides and downsides “aren’t properly explained.”

“You need the downsides explained — you’re going to lose jobs, you’re going to lose taxes,” Ferguson said, acknowledging allowing offsetting might hurt the authority’s image. “It’s going to take a lot of education and convincing to bring the public around.”

But Stoney Creek Coun. Brad Clark praised staff for a comprehensive consultation that also included the city and Wellington County, which noted their planning policies seek to maintain or enhance environmentally sensitive features.

He said revising policies to compensate for habitat destruction imposed by a ministerial zoning order or environmental assessment “is a reasonable compromise” most people would understand.

“Where it gets to allowing offsetting right across the watershed, that’s where residents have keenly voiced concerns,” Clark said.

Citizen appointee Cynthia Janzen said she was impressed by how many people read and offered “thoughtful responses” to a 23-page staff discussion paper.

“It shows that this issue strikes at the heart, I would venture to say, of what makes us a conservation authority and what people expect from us,” Janzen said, calling the staff recommendation principled and pragmatic.

“The exceptions are narrow. We must have them. That is our reality with the provincial government actions of today,” she said.

“We will be potentially in situations where they say there’s an MZO and therefore there will be offsetting. We must be able to respond to that and I know that the staff will carry on to create an equally thoughtful set of implementation guidelines should we be in those situations.”

Environment Hamilton executive director Lynda Lukasik, who signed a joint submission from four environmental groups opposed to offsetting, said the staff solution of preparing for imposed habitat destruction “seems like a reasonable pathway forward.”

She said it’s “insulting” for Ferguson to suggest offsetting opponents need more education on the issue, noting many submissions came from people with extensive backgrounds in striking a balance between conservation and development.

“I would certainly put my faith in them and with conservation authority staff,” said Lukasik, who has a doctorate in urban and regional planning, suggesting the strong public interest reflects growing fears about habitat destruction.

“People want things to go in a different direction and I think that desire is really being amplified by the climate emergency.”

Relocating wetlands and forests to accommodate land development has been overwhelmingly rejected by hundreds of residents who responded to a draft offsetting policy proposed by the Hamilton Conservation Authority board. It’s a sharp rebuke to HCA chair Lloyd Ferguson and the majority of his board that pushed for such a policy in response to developer proposals to relocate a wetland in the headwaters of Ancaster Creek.

A report going to the HCA board on November 4 consequently recommends that offsetting “be limited to address issues associated with Ministerial Zoning Orders (MZO)” and other provincial or municipal decisions. In those situations the staff say where there is a requirement for “the removal or partial removal of a designated or regulated natural heritage feature, offsetting/compensation can be utilized to provide for ‘net gain’ or at a minimum, ‘no net loss’.”

Controversial Ford government legislation last year forced Conservation Authorities to provide permits for MZO projects even where significant environmental areas are harmed. MZOs eliminate all other normal processes including public consultation, municipal planning practices and environmental protection laws and regulations.

A year ago, a majority of the local HCA board directed their staff to come up with an offsetting policy in response to a developer plan to relocate an Ancaster wetland. A draft went out in June for public input and three hundred residents responded virtually unanimously in opposition to offsetting.

Without waiting for that consultation, the developers pushed ahead without an HCA policy, but saw their plans rejected in early June in a secret vote by the HCA board. That came after two webinars by the Hamilton 350 Committee, eight delegations to the board and over 200 letters urging protection of the Garner Road wetland.

Both the level of public outcry and the HCA board rejection of a development permit were unprecedented. Now the public response to a Conservation Authority policy consultation is also unheard of and mirrors the currently high levels of public engagement in Hamilton’s growth plan.

Environment Hamilton made a joint submission with Ontario Nature, Environmental Defence and the Wilderness Society opposing the policy. They noted the need for Indigenous consultation and respect for Indigenous rights in the policy. They called offsetting a “highly risky business” and contended “there is little evidence that even ‘no net loss’ is achieved in most instances, much less ‘net gain’.”

Hamilton’s local developers’ association – the West End Home Builders Association – appears to have been the only group in favour. “[A] proactive Offsetting Policy will allow for improved development of sustainable complete communities that promote conservation, while allowing for practical, replicable, and implementable environmental outcomes,” argued the WEHBA, who also warned that “the reality within the HCA watershed and beyond is that competing land uses in Southern Ontario will be one of the most challenging issues to address in the future.”

The Hamilton staff submission said the offsetting proposal could “hinder or conflict with” the city’s climate, urban forestry and biodiversity strategies. They noted that official plans don’t allow for offsetting and that “compensation conflicts with current city policies”. They also suggested the draft policy was “vague and does not provide adequate direction”.

The HCA Board will make the final decision on the offsetting policy, but even before that happens the outcome appears pre-determined.

Carrie Hewitson sat in a folding chair in the middle of the grass pathway near where she and her husband, Ron Book, farm for most of the day and night, dreading the large tractor rumbling down the land, which had been spraying herbicide on all the other nearby crops.

Her nerves were frayed, anticipating what would happen if she had to confront the tractor. She hadn’t be able to sleep over worries about what was to come, but knew she and Ron had to do something and stand up for their farm and way of life.

“The tractor didn’t come down the lane because it was too small,” she said. “I still don’t know what I would have done.”

But the spraying had damaged some of their crops.

Carrie and Ron have found themselves on the frontlines of a battle between local developers and farmers who are attempting to protect their livelihoods, as well as their ability to grown local, fresh food for the community.

Ron – who comes from one of Ancaster’s original settlers, the Book family, sub-leases land to grow pumpkins, all varieties, colours and sizes of tomatoes, beans, horseradish, peppers and other fresh, locally grown food.

They have been selling some of their fresh produce at the Ottawa Street farmers market, and they have contracts with suppliers. But that has been put in jeopardy after Ron discovered, after talking with his neighbour Ken Marshall, that the owner issued termination notices to their lease, essentially kicking them off the property by Sept. 15.

“We don’t know what will happen after Sept. 15,” said Carrie and Ron. “We have pumpkins that are ripening in the garden and waiting to be picked. We have other vegetables that will be ready in the early fall. We have contracts to fulfill.

“We want to know what our rights are. Will they kill our crops too? This is the big guy against the little guy.”

Ron said he has not been contacted yet, but is fearful of what could happen in the near future. Ron and Carrie have spoken about what they would do, including the possibility, if they can’t farm any more, of moving out of the city.

“I don’t want to do that,” said Carrie.

The 245 Garner Rd. E. property is located in the airport employment growth district (AEGD) and because of the Ontario Municipal Board decision in 2015, the farmland was redesignated industrial.

Marshall has already estimated he lost about $150,000 worth of crops after a real estate firm sprayed them, wiping them out in July.

One Properties Real Estate Inc. has made a conditional offer for the nearly 90 acres of land at 140 Garner Road E., which was listed at $43.5 million.

The company’s goal is to build a 1.3 million-square-foot warehouse complex on the farmland.

A message left with One Properties was not returned.

Nancy Hurst, an Ancaster resident who has helped to spearhead a local campaign against council to prevent an urban boundary expansion, said the bad decisions made, plus the reality of climate change will only be exacerbated by “all that land paved over” and millions of dollars in lost crops.

“The AEGD is a terrible idea. Building warehouses on prime farmland and leaving vacant brownfields elsewhere in the city to rot is foolish,” she said.

In back of the Book land is a wetland that Carrie points out is loaded with environmentally sensitive plants. It is also the subject of a dispute between One Properties and the Hamilton Conservation Authority. The company wanted to fill in the wetland as part of the warehouse project and “create” a larger wetland at another location, amid cries from local farmers and environmentalists. The conservation authority has rejected the plan.

Where abundant crops used to grow, there was nothing but empty land and weeds.

“I just don’t know how they are getting away with this,” said Carrie. “We are not in this business for the money. It’s (a) good, honest day’s work. And it is essential for the community. But the city is allowing valuable farmland to be ruined by developers. And for what? A warehouse? Who will feed the people?”

‘I’d never foreseen this coming,’ Ken Marshall says about estimated $150,000 loss

An Ancaster farmer estimates he has lost $150,000 worth of crops after a real estate firm wiped them out to conduct an archeological study for a potential land deal.

With a lease agreement until the end of the year, Ken Marshall figured he’d be able to harvest his 24 acres of horseradish come mid-October.

But last week, he caught wind of someone in a tractor spraying his vegetables and the flowers another farmer was growing on the Garner Road East land.

“I’d never foreseen this coming along. I never thought it would get this far,” Marshall said Friday.

The obliteration of the crops, which were also plowed over, amounts to a loss of about $150,000 and could complicate fulfilling a contract with a Toronto food supplier, he said.

“It hits me more there being short — if I’m short,” said Marshall, who is a third-generation Ancaster farmer.

The 56-year-old’s predicament comes amid a potential multimillion-dollar land deal between the longtime owners of the property and a real estate firm with offices in Toronto, Edmonton and Calgary.

One Properties Real Estate Inc. has made a conditional offer for the nearly 90 acres of land at 140 Garner Rd. E., which was listed at $43.5 million. (A parcel that was severed from that land and includes a palatial home is listed separately for $49 million.)

One Properties aims to build a 1.3-million-square-foot warehouse complex on the farmland, which is in Hamilton’s airport employment growth district and zoned for industrial use.

But last month, the Hamilton Conservation Authority’s board of directors rejected One Properties’ plan to fill in a wetland on the land as part of the project after the pitch drew strong opposition from a range of community members.

The firm, which had proposed “creating” a larger wetland elsewhere on the land, is moving ahead with a different plan, senior vice-president Stefan Savelli said this week.

The crops had to be cleared for an archeological assessment that must be done by July 31, according to a contract with the vendor, he said.

Savelli said “numerous” attempts were made to reach the farmer about the upcoming archeological work but there were no responses.

“All that I’m aware of is that the crops need to be removed. How they remove them is not my specialty,” Savelli said, noting he didn’t know about the spraying.

Marshall knew One Properties had called but said he only deals with the property owners who lease to him.

Developer Paul Silvestri, whose parents own the land, said he was also upset about the crop destruction.

“Well, I’m pretty pissed,” he said. “There’s a missed communication there. I’m not very happy with (One Properties).”

Silvestri questioned the decision to go ahead and kill the crop without a response from the farmer before harvest time.

“To me, it’s just not right. I’m not on their side. This is a mistake. Their mistake.”

Savelli, however, contends the contract’s July 31 “timeline” was set by the vendor, not One Properties.

Silvestri, who declined to discuss details of the conditional offer, said his family has never had problems with the farmers during a decades-long arrangement. “They’re gentlemen. The people are fantastic.”

Likewise, Marshall spoke of a “great, great rapport” with the Silvestri family over 25 years of farming on the property.

The farmer whose sunflowers and ornamental wheat were destroyed along with Marshall’s horseradish declined to speak The Spectator.

The tractor didn’t reach the pumpkins Carrie Hewitson and her husband, Ron Book, grow on a subleased section of the land that borders theirs.

“You could see the spray just drifting in the air right next to the wetland that we tried so hard — so valiantly — to preserve,” Hewitson recalled.

“It’s heartbreaking,” she added, noting the agricultural land is teeming with wildlife.

The crops were annihilated for a development that still awaits approval, Book pointed out. “For a proposed sale, they’ve gone and destroyed all of the crops.”

The Hamilton Conservation Authority conducted a “compliance review” of the incident this week, Scott Peck, chief administrative officer, said in an email.

“However, based on our observations, the activity in the agricultural field did not extend into the wetland area nor was there any evidence of damage to the wetland as a result of this plowing activity nor any evidence of damage to the wetland as a result of any alleged herbicide application.”

Meanwhile, Marshall and his crew are busy harvesting 12 acres of garlic.

He acknowledges his farming days at 140 Garner Rd. E. could be numbered with the property up for sale.

“It’s a nice piece of dirt,” he says, with a wistful smile.

But last week’s abrupt exit left him shocked.

“Was I pissed off at first? Yeah, I was angry. Now you sit back and look back at it now, ‘OK, what’s done is done.’”

But he still expects to be compensated, somehow.

“I don’t want to take the loss on the chin and just walk away.”

Correction: This story was updated on July 24 to reflect that land at 140 Garner Rd. E. has been severed into parcels that are listed separately: the property that includes the large home is distinct from the nearly 90 acres that involves One Properties Real Estate Inc.

The province has granted the Hamilton Conservation Authority’s request for an exemption from recent legislative changes that could have forced its chair and vice-chair to step down because they’ve served two consecutive one-year terms.

The decision allows Ancaster Coun. Lloyd Ferguson and citizen appointee Santina Moccio to continue as chair and vice-chair, respectively, after being re-elected by acclamation by authority directors at their July 8 annual general meeting.

Ferguson, first elected chair in June 2019, said the exemption also applies to 2022, potentially allowing him and Moccio to serve until the current city council term ends on Dec. 1 of next year.

He said “it’s impossible” to comply with new Conservation Authorities Act provisions requiring authorities with more than one member municipality to rotate chairs and vice-chairs to ensure no municipality holds the positions for more than two years.

The Township of Puslinch is the only other member municipality of the Hamilton authority and is represented by a single representative, currently citizen appointee Susan Fielding, on the 11-member board.

The remaining directors are all from Hamilton — five councillors and five citizen appointees.

Ferguson said had the province not granted the exemption, directors may have been compelled to elect Fielding as both chair and vice-chair.

He said the new legislative requirements are “clearly a flaw” and seem to respond to complaints from other authorities with several member municipalities that leadership positions were being dominated by a select few.

“Puslinch only has one person on (the board) plus they only contribute two per cent of our budget,” Ferguson said.

“I don’t think it’s fair and reasonable that the municipality that contributes two per cent of the budget gets to hold the chair and vice-chair every two years.”

Jeff Yurek, now former minister of the environment, conservation and parks, granted the exemption 15 days before being bounced from cabinet in a June 18 shuffle.

In a June 3 letter to the authority, he said the new requirements “encourage fuller representation and perspectives from participating municipalities in a conservation authority.”

“I encourage the (HCA) membership to take this into account when considering future appointments to the positions of chair and vice-chair,” his letter states.

Fielding, who has represented Puslinch since 2016, said she’s fine with the exemption, but hopes fellow directors will take to heart Yurek’s call to consider leadership roles for a member from her municipality in future.

She noted they’ve done so in the past, electing former Puslinch councillor Don McKay as vice-chair from 2004 to 2011.

Fielding was also elected vice-chair in February 2018, becoming acting chair that November, replacing former Stoney Creek Coun. Doug Conley for eight months when he was defeated in the municipal election.

She ran for vice-chair in June 2019 when Ferguson became chair, but was defeated by Moccio in a secret ballot vote.

“I don’t think it should be a rotation every year but I’m hoping they’re open-minded to considering someone from Puslinch to be in a leadership role,” Fielding said.

She added that although Puslinch comprises only a small portion of the authority’s watersheds, it’s home to the headwaters of Hamilton Harbour and contributes about $30,000 to the authority budget, or about $30 per resident.

“The amount that Puslinch pays is assigned by the province and Puslinch has always willingly paid their share without any issues, and I think they’ve always been a good partner for Hamilton and good stewards of the land.”

The Hamilton Conservation Authority is contemplating a controversial policy that would allow wetlands to be relocated to make way for development, and some local groups are wary.

Lynda Lukasik, executive director of Environment Hamilton, said she has "very mixed feelings" about the prospect of a biodiversity offsetting policy. Such a policy would mean developers could remove some natural features to build on the space, and replace those features elsewhere.

"It kind of feels like they're opening a bit of a Pandora's box," she said.

In its online posting, the HCA says biodiversity offsetting "should always be a last resort."

A lengthy discussion paper accompanies its call for feedback from the public, which it will accept until July 31.

Concerns for Ancaster wetland proposal

Don McLean, head of advocacy group Citizens at City Hall (CATCH), says "shifting" around natural features isn't the way to go.

"Wetlands are where they are because nature put them there, and the idea of putting them somewhere else in order to allow development is a bad idea," he said.

Among his concerns: that the policy might revive a proposal to relocate a wetland and stream segment in the headwaters of Ancaster Creek. A developer proposed building warehouses and a parking lot in the area and moving the wetland elsewhere.

The idea sparked environment groups and the public to speak out in opposition, and the HCA board rejected that proposal in June. That's when there was no policy or guidelines related to offsetting in place.

But prior to that vote in November 2020, the board had directed staff to explore this policy.

"If you change the policy, then you can open things up again," McLean said.

No-go areas will include provincially-significant wetlands

Lukasik also pointed to the connection.

"Those are important ecosystems that play critical roles, especially in the headwater areas of watersheds," she said. "To think that you could easily replicate that somewhere else, I think, is human folly."

Though the policy is in its initial stages, Scott Peck, HCA director of watershed, planning and engineering, said "no-go areas" would include provincially significant wetlands.

But the Ancaster property at 140 Garner Rd. E. is not one of those, he said. It's referred to as a "locally significant" wetland.

"If there was an offsetting policy in place and somebody came wanting to do something with that wetland on that property, we would consider it under the policy framework of the day," Peck said.

Biodiversity offsetting policies have been developed by the Toronto Region Conservation Authority, Credit Valley Conservation and the Lake Simcoe Region Conservation Authority.

But similar moves have drawn criticism in nearby Niagara.

In 2015, the Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority (NPCA) planned to launch a pilot project on biodiversity offsetting for lands by Thundering Waters Golf Club that were part of a $1.4-billion housing development.

Protestors camped out on the lands, and allegations of corruption and mismanagement at the NPCA — which now has a reworked board — led to scrutiny by Ontario's auditor general.

Among the auditor general's 2018 report findings, Bonnie Lysyk said the NPCA hadn't studied the ecosystem "to determine if it contained unique features that cannot be replaced."

Peck acknowledged that an offsetting policy would likely draw comments "from across the spectrum," from those seeing benefits to those seeing it as a "slippery slope."

'Premised on destruction'

Anne Bell, director of conservation and education at Ontario Nature, called offsetting "risky" and questioned what the thresholds would be for ensuring it's used as a last resort.

"It's a trade off that's premised on destruction," she said. "You destroy something, and then you do your best to compensate for that loss."

While the conservation authority lists achieving a "net gain" among its guiding principles, it also says offset areas will need to be equal in size and quality as the original. Developers have to make up for any impacts.

Policy could be protective move

While the feature might be recreated elsewhere, she said people around the destroyed environment will lose out. She wonders how consideration for climate change and landscape resilience, wildlife habitats and corridors, and consultation with Indigenous communities will fit into the policy.

But she also noted the provincial government's ministerial zoning orders (MZO) have given it the ability to override local zoning rules. A strong policy at the ready, she said, would help.

"If we are going to lose things, then better that we can actually require compensation to the actual scale and actual standards," she said.

In its online post, the HCA says MZOs can allow the Ontario government to make the decision to offset.

But in that case, a compensation agreement would be made through the HCA permit process — and that would have to follow the offsetting policy.

Lukasik agreed that it was a "catch 22" and that she has additional questions.

A summary of feedback and a draft policy is expected at a board meeting in the fall.

Climate and community groups are celebrating a stunning environmental victory on Garner Road, but thanks to the Doug Ford government the fate of an Ancaster wetland and headwaters stream remains in jeopardy. The Hamilton Conservation Authority board has turned down a developer request to relocate these aquatic features to make way for construction of five warehouses.

The board spent more than an hour and a half in camera before announcing the decision, so it seems unlikely the vote was unanimous. Prior to the secret vote, they heard from seven citizen delegations and then spent two hours in the formal Section 28 hearing that is restricted to professional staff, the development applicants and the board members.

The surprise decision came despite the absence of the most vocal opponent of the relocation. Councillor Brad Clark, who has been fighting attempts to establish an HCA policy allowing ‘offsetting’ of natural features, was unable to participate in the special Section 28 hearing because of a conflict of interest involving his son. It is unheard of for the HCA Board to completely reject an application after a Section 28 hearing.

All the citizen delegations and 200 letters to the board opposed the application to “slide over” the stream and the Garner Road marsh to a new location adjacent to Highway 6. These public objections bolstered the staff report submitted by HCA deputy-director Scott Peck who contended that the application violated HCA policy. Peck presented during the hearing and gave his professional response to key claims by the developer’s environmental consultant.

Those claims included that the marsh is doomed to be overrun by the invasive phragmites weed, and that the new wetland would be better because it would include an open water pond. In response, Peck noted that the Conservation Authority and others successfully control phragmites on HCA-owned lands, and that introducing an open water pond to the Ancaster Creek headwaters would harm its rare coldwater status (that has earned it the alternative moniker of Coldwater Creek).

The developers do have appeal options that were increased by Ford government legislation last fall that sharply weakened Conservation Authorities. But the huge public outcry against the destruction of a marsh and parts of the Ancaster Creek headwaters will make a reversal of the HCA decision politically costly with a provincial election less than a year away.

Prior to passing of Bill 229 last December, an appeal had to be filed within 30 days and could only go to the provincial Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry where Conservation Authority decisions were rarely overturned. However the new rules, like so many of the Ford government changes, are much more helpful to landowners.

The developers now have up to 120 days to launch an appeal, and it can go either to the Minister or to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal (LPAT). The Minister is also now able to decide on a permit directly without involvement of the local Conservation Authority.

It would appear that the developers also have another option – to ask for a Ministerial Zoning Order whereby the provincial government would override all the planning rules and any requirements for a public process. Earlier this year a legal challenge to this option was launched against a provincial MZO to allow an Amazon warehouse on top of a provincially significant wetland in Pickering. In response the Ford government passed new legislation to retroactively exempt MZOs from the laws on which the legal challenge was based.

And it was clear in last week’s HCA hearing that the developers are legally able to build around the marsh as long as they ensure a buffer zone. While this would technically preserve the wetland, its resulting isolation among several large buildings and massive parking lots would certainly degrade it and restrict its use by wildlife. Opposing groups including Hamilton 350 Committee, Action 13 and Stop Sprawl Hamilton have vowed to continue working to protect the marsh and headwaters stream.

Other opponents who spoke at the HCA meeting included a representative of the Hamilton Naturalists’ Club, and the family who farm the adjacent land and operate the iconic Ancaster Pumpkin Patch on part of it. In addition, a McMaster faculty member described the wetland restoration work planned for University land near the mouth of Ancaster Creek.

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The Hamilton Conservation Authority (HCA) has nixed a controversial bid from a developer whose plan to build a warehouse would have required bulldozing a wetland by the headwaters to Ancaster Creek.

The permit hearing on Thursday (June 3) lasted until nearly midnight before the HCA said it would sign off on a staff recommendation to deny the application from One Properties Real Estate Inc. of Toronto. One Properties had a plan to build a 1.3-million-square-foot warehouse complex at the site at 140 Garner Rd. E. in the west end of Hamilton.

The HCA heard fierce opposition from seven delegated speakers at the meeting Thursday, including area farmers. One Properties had proposed building a new wetlands in the area if it was allowed to build the warehouse.

Hamilton Conservation Authority directors have rejected a developer’s controversial bid for a permit to bulldoze a wetland by the headwaters to Ancaster Creek to make way for a massive warehouse complex.

“The board after considerable deliberation decided to deny the application and the hearing is now adjourned,” authority chair Lloyd Ferguson announced without elaboration after directors emerged from an hour-and-a-half closed session at their June 3 meeting.

Their ruling capped nearly five hours of delegations and a formal permit hearing that ended shortly before midnight.

Authority staff recommended rejection of the plan, which promised to create a new and slightly bigger wetland beside the proposed 1.3-million-square-foot warehouse complex at 140 Garner Rd. East.

But opposition was also fierce from seven delegated speakers, a coalition of local environmental groups and in 133 written submissions from citizens, a coalition of churches, scientists and two former authority chairs.

“This is the Rubicon; don’t cross it,” environmental activist Don McLean urged directors, arguing approval would set a dangerous precedent and cost the authority public support, including in land and money donations.

“The developer is seeking a permit to destroy a wetland and parts of the headwaters of Ancaster Creek, (and) pretty it up by calling it a relocation,” he said.

“It will open up the floodgates and make wetlands and headwater streams a development target across the HCA watersheds and beyond. You will hear no end of this precedent.”

Summer Thomas, a 19-year-old ecology student, said the area is home to many birds, bats, snakes, amphibians and other wildlife, some endangered or threatened.

She said Ontario has already lost 72 per cent of its wetlands, which absorb carbon dioxide, helping mitigate “the climate crisis.”

“It is decisions like this that chip away at chances of avoiding the planet’s incoming sixth mass extinction,” Thomas said.

But Sergio Manchia, lead consultant for applicant One Properties Real Estate Inc. of Toronto, rejected that the plan would set a precedent, even disputing the 1.8-hectare wetland’s existence.

He said it wasn’t identified in city planning studies for the area, part of the airport employment growth district, suggesting it is “a wet area” and not the locally significant wetland identified by authority staff.

“There is no provincially significant wetland and there is no local wetland,” Manchia said of the city studies. “There is notification of a watercourse, which again we are requesting to shift, but certainly not eliminate, and enhance.”

Ken Glasbergen, ecological consultant for One Properties, acknowledged the wetland is locally significant, but said it is of “low quality” and being degraded by invasive phragmites that will eventually overtake its cattails.

Removing the phragmites requires excavation, he said, offering “good reason” to create a new wetland about 70 metres to the east, where a 14-metre setback from Highway 6 will provide a green corridor to woodlands to the south.

Glasbergen said the new 1.95-hectare wetland would be a series of “open water features” connected by a short channel.

“The open water will allow for the establishment of amphibian and reptile habitat, which is currently missing,” he said — an assertion contradicted by neighbours.

But Scott Peck, who oversees the authority’s watershed planning and engineering, said the plan isn’t allowed by existing regulations, which require a 30-metre buffer between development and wetlands.

He said he isn’t convinced a marginally bigger “wetland in a rectangular box” is an improvement and the proposed ponds may have the undesired effect of warming Ancaster Creek.

Peck said although the authority will consider enacting a natural heritage offsetting policy this fall to allow wetland relocations as a last resort, he’d expect it to require the ecological compensation to be two to three times what is lost.

He said the Ancaster wetland was identified in an environmental impact study for a 2018 subdivision plan by a previous landowner that proposed to protect it.

“It is a wetland and it is regulated by the HCA.”

The push to relocate a wetland and stream in the Ancaster Creek headwaters heads back to the Hamilton Conservation Authority board on Thursday after being deferred in the face of opposition that continues to grow. New information and new voices are bolstering the arguments against granting a permit for a multi-warehouse development at the corner of Garner Road and Highway 6.

The deferral came at the May 6 board meeting of the Authority at the request of the developers after the HCA received more than 60 letters urging it to reject the relocations. That occurred less than an hour after the Hamilton 350 Committee conducted an on-line “emergency rally” against the proposal.

As of Friday another 24 letters had been submitted and five individuals had registered to speak to the board on June 3. The new correspondence includes ones from founding HCA chair Tom Beckett, and from Brian McHattie, also a former HCA chair who was the ward one councillor from 2003 to 2014.

Beckett, a retired Superior Court Justice, reminded the HCA board members that they have an obligation to vote in the interests of the HCA not the developers. Referring to the threat to the Ancaster Creek headwaters and wetland, Beckett advised that Board members must reject this permit application and that “to vote otherwise would be a serious breach of ethics and the law.”

McHattie draws on his past position as “the Environment Canada wildlife habitat advisor to the Great Lakes Remedial Action Plans” and as lead author of a study on “How Much Habitat is Enough”, that is now in its third edition. He says that study recommends “at least 6 percent [wetland area] to ensure groundwater recharge, surface water retention, filtering out nutrients, and providing fresh cool water to sub-watersheds downstream, in this case Spencer Creek and on into Cootes Paradise.”

A 2008 study by the HCA found that wetlands now make up only 0.3 percent of the Ancaster Creek sub-watershed. That underlines McHattie’s contention that the Garner Road wetland is “all the more important to protect.”

A Hamilton Spectator report on the affected lands raises questions about the accuracy of the claims being made by the developers that the wetland is not significant. The farm family which operates the iconic Ancaster Pumpkin Patch on the property disputes the developer claim that only one toad inhabits the marsh.

They told the Spectator reporter about “frogs, toads, snakes, salamanders and many birds, including migratory ducks and swans that use the area as a resting spot.” The Book family say the calls from amphibians are “deafening” in spring and summer

HCA staff are recommending against the application which violates Conservation Authority, municipal and provincial policies although it could still be approved by the Authority board. The staff identify it as a “locally significant wetland” and also “a Core area” under Hamilton’s official plan. They also call the permit request “premature” because the project has not been vetted by city planning staff.

The developer initially approached the HCA last fall. In response a divided board ordered their staff to draft a policy that might permit relocation of wetlands under certain circumstances. That draft was presented in early April and has now been released for public comment over the summer. But the developers aren’t prepared to wait, another way in which their application is premature.

Ancaster Creek is also called Coldwater Creek because part of it supports cold water fish habitat. Downstream of the wetland it flows through the Ancaster Golf and Country Club and past the Old Mill Restaurant before going over Sherman Falls on the way to joining Spencer Creek near Cootes Drive adjacent to McMaster University.

The opportunity for citizens to delegate at the June 3 meeting passed before the agenda was posted but written comments can be sent to the Jaime.Tellier@conservationhamilton.ca

Find this article on the CATCH website, along with the full archive of CATCH articles. hamiltoncatch.org

Ron Book says he’d be fine with a developer’s proposal to relocate a wetland near the rear of his Garner Road East farm property if the plants and wildlife could be moved at the same time.

But the Ancaster resident and his wife, Carrie Hewitson, say they’re worried how the plan will affect the 1.8-hectare wetland’s frogs, toads, snakes, salamanders and many birds, including migratory ducks and swans using the area as a resting spot.

“Just to go and fill it in and then dig something later, that’s ridiculous, because then you’ve killed everything that exists,” said Book, whose family was among Ancaster’s earliest settlers and has a nearby road named after it.

One Properties Real Estate Inc. of Toronto is seeking a permit from the Hamilton Conservation Authority to bulldoze the wetland, part of the headwaters for Ancaster Creek, to allow for the construction of five warehouse buildings.

In return, the company proposes to create a new 1.95-hectare wetland and watercourse by the eastern boundary of the 35.2-hectare property, severed from an adjoining lot at 140 Garner Rd. E. last year.

A supporting document for the permit application — set for a formal hearing at the June 3 authority board meeting — says the wetland is “a good candidate for location adjustment” because it’s dominated by cattails and invasive phragmites plants, and has no open water.

The document also states amphibian calling surveys in 2016 and 2020 identified a single American toad each time.

But Book and Hewitson told the Ancaster News during a recent visit that the wetland is full of bullrushes and they constantly hear frogs and peepers, with more than one making its way into their tomato patch. “We pick tomatoes and everything late into the evening some nights to get ready for market and it’s deafening, the sound of them, spring and summer,” said Hewitson, calling the amphibians a natural pesticide.

“We get eaten alive by mosquitoes when we’re picking tomatoes, so frogs and toads are good.”

Hewitson said there’s “a plethora of wildlife” using the wetland, perhaps the most spectacular being the hundreds of migratory swans touching down every spring, when it becomes wet enough for a creek-fed pond for a couple of weeks.

“They come and they forage and they rest, and then they can continue on with their migration,” she said.

In a presentation to authority directors in October, One Properties consultant Le' Ann Seely said the wetland isn’t provincially significant and the proposed relocation offers the chance to create a better one with more diverse plant life and species.

She said technologies can enhance drainage and clean the water going into the new wetland, including from the warehouse development’s paved surfaces.

“We’d like the opportunity to show we can improve the ecological systems,” said Seely, a landscape architect.

But McMaster University biologist James Quinn said he’s concerned “mucking around” with the headwaters to Ancaster Creek will undermine efforts to improve its water quality downstream, including by the university.

He said Ontario has already lost too many wetlands, which mitigate flooding and climate change, and it’s not easy to create a new one, even with the right depth and hydrology, because it’s not in the spot nature chose.

“You don’t just pick it up and move it,” Quinn said. “For that to develop into something like this (existing one) would take a very long time.

“Especially the species that are living here, for them to find this new wetland, they’re not going to wait around for this new wetland to become a decent wetland.”

Stoney Creek Coun. Brad Clark says he’s been cleared by the city’s integrity commissioner to continue opposing a controversial Hamilton Conservation Authority policy proposal to allow developers to bulldoze wetlands and creeks in some instances.

Clark announced he was seeking the commissioner’s advice at the start of the authority’s May 6 meeting, when he declared a conflict of interest on a contentious application to raze an Ancaster wetland and create a replacement one nearby.

The applicant, One Properties Real Estate Inc., is represented by Hamilton planning consultant Sergio Manchia, who has a business relationship with Clark’s son, previously identified as a cannabis retail shop.

Clark said he sought the integrity commissioner’s advice after being told “some individuals” questioned if he also had a conflict in opposing the proposed broader wetland policy to allow what is known as natural heritage offsetting.

While the policy isn’t scheduled to go to authority directors until this fall, he has already twice voted against the initiative, calling it “a dramatic shift” in the wrong direction.

Clark said the integrity commissioner confirmed he has no conflict on the policy and other planning issues, like a lands-need assessment that could expand the urban boundary, because they apply to everyone.

He said he would have been severely limited in his councillor’s role had the commissioner’s assessment ruled otherwise.

“Thankfully, it didn’t,” Clark said. “It’s what I expected. If you’re dealing with general planning matters, the general policy for the entire city and it’s not specific to a subject property or a specific individual, then there’s no way there’s a conflict.

Conservation authority directors had been scheduled to hold a formal hearing on the Ancaster application at the May 6 meeting, but it was rescheduled for their June 3 meeting at the request of One Properties.

Two opponents had registered to speak on the permit, which authority staff recommended be denied, while another 60 residents submitted written objections.

At stake are a 1.8-hectare wetland and tributary of Ancaster Creek located in the middle of a 35-hectare property at 140 Garner Rd. E. that is in the airport employment growth district.

One Properties is proposing to fill in the wetland to allow for the construction of five warehouse buildings and then create a new 1.95-hectare wetland and watercourse by the eastern property line.

It contends the replacement wetland will not just be bigger, but designed to create more plant and wildlife diversity than the existing one.

In return, the warehouses will create about 3,000 permanent jobs, apart from “thousands” of temporary ones during construction, valued at more than $250 million, the company states in materials provided as part of its application.

But a conservation authority staff report argues that neither city nor authority policies allow wetlands to be moved or altered and generally require a 30-metre buffer for any adjacent development.

A developer’s controversial application for a permit to bulldoze a locally significant wetland in Ancaster to make way for a 1.3-million-square-foot warehouse complex is being paused for a month amid mounting opposition.

Proponent One Properties Real Estate Inc. of Toronto requested the deferral on May 6, moments before Hamilton Conservation Authority directors were set to hold a formal hearing.

Two opponents had registered to speak on the permit, which authority staff recommended be denied, while another 60 residents submitted written objections in the preceding three days.

At stake are a 1.8-hectare wetland and tributary of Ancaster Creek located in the middle of a 35-hectare property at 140 Garner Rd. E. that is in the airport employment growth district.

One Properties is proposing to fill in the wetland to allow for the construction of five warehouse buildings and then create a new 1.95-hectare wetland and watercourse by the eastern property line.

It contends the replacement wetland will not just be bigger, but designed to create more plant and wildlife diversity than the existing one.

In return, the warehouses will create about 3,000 permanent jobs, as well as “thousands” of temporary ones during construction, valued at more than $250 million, the company states in materials provided as part of its application.

But a conservation authority staff report counters that neither city nor authority policies allow wetlands to be moved or altered and generally require a 30-metre buffer for any adjacent development.

The permit application is also premature because One Properties has yet to submit a planning application for the proposal to the city, it states, noting a previous developer submitted a different plan to the city that preserved the wetland.

“HCA policy direction is that wetlands and wetland buffers be maintained and protected,” the staff report states. “HCA policy does not support the removal of an existing locally significant wetland and the creation of a new wetland in a new location.”

In a presentation to authority directors last October, Sergio Manchia, the developer’s lead consultant, said the wetland’s location in the middle of the property is like “a hole in the doughnut,” making it virtually impossible to build there.

“We’re not undermining the need and trying to enhance it,” he said. “We’re just saying let’s slide it over and we have basically a million square feet to build.”

But Ancaster resident Nancy Hurst, who was set to speak on the permit application before it was deferred to the June 3 authority meeting, said afterwards it’s no more possible to “slide over” a wetland than a tree.

“You can fill it and dig a new hole and put water in that new hole, but that doesn’t make it a wetland, it makes it a retaining pond,” she said.

“The headwaters of the Ancaster Creek is now going to be fed by rain that drains across a parking lot and a whole bunch of concrete at a factory complex.”

The permit application comes as the authority is considering a new “natural heritage offsetting” policy to allow wetland relocations in some cases if it's unavoidable and the lost habitat can be replaced by something equal or better.

The proposed policy is scheduled to go to authority directors this fall following public consultations, but is already opposed by some around the table.

At the April directors meeting, Stoney Creek Coun. Brad Clark argued the policy “is a dramatic shift” in the wrong direction. But Clark won’t take part in the hearing on the One Properties permit application, having declared a conflict of interest because his son is in a business relationship with Manchia — previously identified as a cannabis store.

Manchia is among Hamilton’s most prominent planning consultants and Clark said he has asked the city’s integrity commissioner for advice on whether he should declare a conflict on other planning issues, including urban expansion.

HAMILTON — Lynda Lukasik worries about the future of Hamilton’s natural wetlands.

At the heart of her concern is one developer’s proposal to relocate a wetland in Ancaster to make way for a 120,774-square-metre warehouse. “That feels like it’s a bit of a Pandora’s box if suddenly we’re opening the door to a developer being able to come in and shift over a wetland because they’ve got a massive warehouse,” says the executive director of the non-profit Environment Hamilton.

One Properties’ proposal is among the main reasons the Hamilton Conservation Authority board is looking into establishing an official “offsetting” policy to relocate natural features such as wetlands, floodplains, and rivers in some situations. A discussion paper will be shared for public consultation early this month and presented to the City of Hamilton and the Township of Puslinch for feedback before the board makes a decision in the fall. It defines offsetting as an agreement “to compensate for harm to biodiversity at one site by creating, restoring or enhancing biodiversity elsewhere, generally on a ‘like for like’ basis.” But while some see offsetting as a way of mitigating urban sprawl by creating more centrally located, developable land, others, including Lukasik, worry about the ecological impacts of tampering with the region’s marshes, bogs, and swamps.

“A wetland is where it is for a reason,” says Mike Waddington, a Canada research chair in ecohydrology for the School of Earth, Environment and Society at McMaster University, in an email. “I am not a fan of [offsetting] policies being adopted in regions like Hamilton where a large percentage of the natural wetlands in the region have already been destroyed.”

According to Ontario Nature, “wetlands are critical to water filtration, flood retention, erosion control, carbon storage, nutrient cycling and groundwater recharge.” Yet the organization notes that less than 30 per cent of southern Ontario’s original wetlands remain, and just 10 per cent survive in Niagara and the GTA.

If the HCA does adopt an offsetting policy (which would apply to the watershed it oversees but not to HCA-owned lands, such as conservation areas), Hamilton will become one of a number of places in the province that allow the practice in some form. Scott Peck, the HCA’s deputy chief administrative officer and director of watershed planning and engineering, says similar policies have been applied by the Toronto and Region, Credit Valley, and Lake Simcoe Region conservation authorities. Under some policies, he says, offsetting is considered a last resort: “first and foremost is the protection of a feature in its place, and you design your development around that feature.” Where this isn’t possible, attempts are made to mitigate impacts on a given water feature while still leaving it in place. “If you can’t do that,” he says, “the decision is made to lose the feature and then look to compensate it elsewhere.”

Before the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority adopted an offsetting policy in 2014, the GTA was losing some of its natural habitats to construction — “often with little or no compensation,” according to a statement from the TRCA in an email. Since then, the authority has entered into more than 90 ecosystem-compensation agreements.

In Ancaster, landscape architect Le’ Ann Seely, a consultant on the development, believes it will be possible to take out the existing wetland, build a better one nearby, and “come up with a net ecological gain.” She explains that the wetland in question is full of the invasive plant phragmites and has little biodiversity. The developer hopes to dig it up and create a larger storm-water pond nearby that would be too deep for phragmites to grow and filled with more diverse, native plants.

For Lloyd Ferguson, chair of the HCA’s board of directors, supporting the discussion paper and consultation doesn’t constitute a policy endorsement. Ferguson says he won’t take a position until he has more information but wants to explore the idea. It’s an “‘if and only if’ policy,” he says. “I don’t think it’s appropriate to pick up a wetland and move it over 100 acres, but to move 20 per cent of it over by 20 feet? I’m less sure.”

Ferguson, who notes that Hamilton’s population is expected to increase by 41 per cent over the next 30 years (and that residents are already concerned about urban sprawl), says offsetting may allow for more sustainable growth: “If you can get an enhanced wetland that protects the natural environment and get some proper plantings in there — while at the same time getting better land yield for development that creates jobs — I’m not sure we lose anything.”

Neither Lukasik nor Waddington sees it that way. Waddington worries that offsetting could be “the start of a slippery slope towards a green light on destroying more and more wetlands,” while Lukasik says it “could open the floodgates” to development. “I think if the conservation authority didn’t have a policy to consider, then we couldn’t go there,” she says. “If there is a policy, then it’s far more likely they’re going to end up going there at some point with a proponent who comes in and pushes.”

Ferguson says he expects developers to push — but that offsetting policies can help keep private interests in check. “Developers always want more. If we have a three-foot height restriction, they want four,” he says. “They’re motivated by profit. It’s our job to say no.” But Brad Clark, another Hamilton city councillor who sits on the HCA board, questions whether it should even be looking into policy that could compromise existing wetlands: “It just feels so inappropriate for a conservation authority.”

Clark, who opposed creating the discussion paper, says he’s at least glad that the public will have a say on the policy — but as an HCA board member, his priority is wetland preservation. “I’m very nervous about any policy that would enable the paving over of wetlands with the option of creating an engineered pond that we hope will become just as biodiverse as the pond that we have destroyed.”

Developers are pushing ahead this week with relocation of a wetland and part of the headwaters of Ancaster Creek to make way for five proposed warehouses on Garner Road at Highway 6. At their Thursday evening on-line meeting, the board of the Hamilton Conservation Authority will debate the unprecedented relocation that contravenes existing wetland protection policies and is opposed by their staff.

A month ago the HCA board sharply divided over a draft revised policy that would contemplate wetland relocations in exceptional circumstances. The process began last fall after pressure from the same developers. Public consultation on the draft is scheduled over the summer, but the warehouse proponents have apparently decided to push ahead without it in hopes the HCA board will override its existing policies.

The affected property is the eastern half of a 170-acre block owned by developer Frank Silvestri. His 30,000 square-foot mansion sits on the western half and is currently for sale with an asking price of $49 million. The proposal is to replace the wetland and creek in the centre of the property with a constructed wetland, creek and stormwater pond along the edge of the lands adjacent to Highway 6 which itself is now scheduled for a widening to four lanes.

“HCA policy direction is that wetlands and wetland buffers be maintained and protected,” stresses the staff report on the proposal. “In this regard, HCA policy does not support the removal of an existing locally significant wetland and the creation of a new wetland in a new location.”

The staff report notes the existing wetland “is considered a Core Area for the purposes of the City’s Urban Official Plan” and that this proposal has not been submitted to the city so approval by the HCA “would be premature pending a decision regarding the ultimate development proposal for the subject lands by the City of Hamilton.” A different development plan that impacted the wetland but didn’t call for its removal was earlier rejected by the HCA. Wetlands soak up carbon emissions better than trees.

A study of Ancaster Creek completed in 2008 by the HCA indicates that “historically wetlands followed much of the stream corridor until it met with present day Rousseaux Street” but that now there are only two – and only the one proposed to be relocated is where it was originally. The study found eight percent of the watershed was originally wetland, and now only 0.3 percent remains.

“In summary, future development in the headwaters of this subwatershed is of primary concern to the fisheries potential as it increases the potential for erosion downstream,” concluded the study. “Present natural systems (aquatic & terrestrial) must remain intact and preserved in order to keep the integrity of this historically coldwater system.”

After crossing Garner Road, the creek flows through the Ancaster Golf and Country Club and then over Tiffany Falls. Below the escarpment it is located west of Wilson and Main West, before flowing under Osler Drive and alongside McMaster where wetland restoration work is underway.

The existing wetland is 4.5 acres and a 30-metre wide buffer is also protected by HCA, city and provincial regulations. The developer proposal envisions the creation of a slightly larger wetland which they argue would be an enhancement over the existing one.

They say the relocation would allow for construction of five warehouses and surface parking areas for a promised 3000 permanent employees. They estimate the total value of the project as over $250 million.

HCA staff warn that approval of the proposal may create legal liabilities for the HCA because “as a regulatory agency with responsibility for reviewing development proposed in natural hazard prone areas and natural heritage areas, the HCA is aware the subject property contains a watercourse and a wetland and that the development as proposed will impact these features.”

The HCA board has five city councillors and six citizen volunteers. It is chaired by Ancaster councillor Lloyd Ferguson who favours the project. He clashed sharply with Brad Clark over this proposal at the last HCA board meeting. Chad Collins, Tom Jackson and Esther Pauls also sit on the HCA board along with several citizens.

The opportunity for citizens to delegate at the May 6 meeting passed before the agenda was posted. However, written comments can be sent to the CAO Lisa.Burnside@conservationhamilton.ca.

A Hamilton Conservation Authority plan to let developers bulldoze some wetlands and other natural features if they recreate them elsewhere is dividing its own directors, even before the city and public get their say on a staff discussion paper.

The proposed “natural heritage offsetting” policy, which draws on ones at three other authorities, including Toronto’s, would only permit the trade-off if unavoidable and the lost habitat can be replaced by something equal or better.

While also prohibiting destruction of irreplaceable habitat, it still didn’t sit well with some directors at their April 1 meeting.

“This is a dramatic shift in conservation authority policy,” said Stoney Creek Coun. Brad Clark, questioning a goal to enact the change by this fall. “What’s the urgency?”

Authority chair Lloyd Ferguson said the initiative responds to a developer’s request last October to move a wetland in Ancaster’s airport employment growth district to make way for a 1.3-million-square-foot warehouse.

But Ferguson, councillor for Ancaster, said he’s aware of another two pending requests from the same area, arguing the policy will yield better land use, slow expansion of the urban boundary, and result in a net habitat benefit.

“It would actually enhance it,” he said. “The compensation may be three to one, two to one, four to one — who knows? That’ll come out in the public consultation.”

But Clark told Ferguson the authority seems to be acting “at the behest of a developer.”

“No, I think it’s more trying to create jobs and allow these things to move forward and get more tax credit,” Ferguson said.

“When did the conservation authority get in that business?” Clark shot back.

“OK, I don’t want to debate this with you,” Ferguson responded. “We’re not in that business, we’re in the conservation business.”

“Then why did you say it?” asked Clark, who joined two other directors in opposing the release of a discussion paper for public consultation. “I think this is wrong for the conservation authority to be going in this direction.”

Citizen appointee Maria Topalovic, who voted in favour, said she sees no urgency to the policy, but other authorities allow natural heritage offsetting in limited cases and the consultation will help directors decide whether to join suit.

“I really look forward to feedback and discussing it further,” she said.

Dan Bowman, citizen representative for Dundas, said “public opinion is extremely important,” but he believes the authority needs a policy.

“What that policy says, through this discussion paper, will be well-founded, and there will be a lot of public input and input from other professionals,” he said.

“As a board, we still have the opportunity to make decisions. We have a policy to guide us from time to time.”

Scott Peck, the authority’s deputy chief operating officer, said provincial conservation policies make no reference to allowing offsetting or compensation for destroyed habitat.

He said the same is true for the official plans for Hamilton and Wellington County, home to Puslinch, the authority’s other municipal partner.

“Their policies really don’t consider compensation as an appropriate approach,” Peck said of the municipalities. “They very much speak to keeping features in place, protecting them, maintaining them, and hopefully enhancing them.”

Though not a voting member of the board, Margaret Reid, chair of the authority’s charitable Hamilton Conservation Foundation, called the proposed policy “counterintuitive to conservation,” and worried about the fundraising impact.

“A lot of our donors are small donors, and even some of our corporate donors are going to be folks that are environmentally inclined,” she said. “I do feel that they might not want to donate to our group, which would be dreadful.”

Peck said the authority will publicize the proposed policy via its website and social media.

Stoney Creek Coun. Brad Clark says he fears a decision by the Hamilton Conservation Authority to create a policy to potentially let developers move wetlands will see them lining up to do so.

Authority directors on Nov. 12 directed staff to draft a policy of “last resort” to allow developers to bulldoze wetlands in some cases if they offset the loss by creating similar habitat elsewhere.

Six of Ontario’s 36 conservation authorities have such policies and they are designed for instances where “no reasonable alternative exits to locate the development elsewhere,” a staff report stated.

The move to create a policy came in response to a developer’s request to relocate a “low-quality” wetland to make way for a 1.3-million-square-foot warehouse in Ancaster’s airport employment growth district.

“These are ecosystems that punch more than their weight when it comes to the area that they occupy. They are really critical ecosystems between the aquatic and terrestrial landscape.” – Mike Waddington

Clark said a similar Niagara Peninsula Conservation Authority “biodiversity offsetting” policy ran into controversy when it supported destroying 13 acres of provincially significant wetland for a massive Thundering Waters development in Niagara Falls.

The ensuing public furor forced a reversal, but only after several politicians who backed the scheme were defeated in the last municipal election, he said.

Clark, one of three HCA board members who opposed creating a Hamilton policy, said allowing wetland relocations “just seems so wildly inconsistent and incongruent” with the authority’s mission.

It also ignores wetlands' importance in regulating water flows and as climate-change carbon sinks, he said, and threatens to return Hamilton to a “1950s mindset” of burying them.

“As soon as you create a policy that enables it, you’re in essence saying you’re permitting it. So, ‘Come to us and we’ll consider your application,’” Clark said.

“If we become that permissive, that we’re willing as a conservation authority to look the other way when it comes to protecting a wetland, I’m not sure we deserve the title.”

Ancaster Coun. Lloyd Ferguson, who chairs the authority and led the push for a policy, said most authorities in other major urban centres, including in the Greater Toronto Area, allow wetlands to be moved in limited cases.

The Grand River Authority’s last-resort policy, for instance, permitted the Valery Ancaster Business Park by Duff’s Corners to remove a wetland in return for creating a retention pond elsewhere, he said.

Ferguson said the policy will set strict conditions and is needed quickly because the province is proposing changes to the Conservation Authorities Act to let developers appeal permit denials to the Local Planning Appeal Tribunal and minister of Natural Resources and Forestry.

He said the Ancaster developer’s request to move a wetland at 140 Garner Rd. E. seeks to overcome building limitations on land earmarked for industrial growth to create jobs and tax revenue.

“If they can enhance that wetland and keep it on the same property, then we can give consideration to it, but we don’t want to do them one-off. We want to wait until we get the policy done,” Ferguson said.

“It has to meet a lot of conditions why they can’t leave it in place, and then we’ll give consideration to it and then we’ll come up with a design of how to do it.”

Mike Waddington, a McMaster University expert on wetlands, said he’s not a fan of moving them, whether provincially significant or not, and Ontario has plenty of developable land without doing so.

He said if a wetland is in poor shape, it’s often because development has degraded the surrounding landscape, not because it no longer performs a critical function.

“Wetlands are where they are for a reason. You can’t build a better one if it’s not in the same spot that it used to be,” he said.

“These are ecosystems that punch more than their weight when it comes to the area that they occupy. They are really critical ecosystems between the aquatic and terrestrial landscape.”

Waddington said he’s also discouraged by the province’s plan to let a cabinet minister potentially override conservation authority decisions on development by wetlands.

“Last I saw, our ministers don’t have backgrounds in environmental science,” he said.

Sergio Manchia, consultant for the proposed Garner Road development by Toronto client One Properties, said the wetland is in the middle of the 69-hectare property, “a hole in the doughnut” that makes it virtually impossible to build there.

“We’re not undermining the need and trying to enhance it,” he told authority directors in an October presentation. “We’re just saying let’s slide it over and we have basically a million square feet to build.”